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A Commissioners' Conference of the Girl Guides Movement will be held at the Royal Hotel, Matlock Bath, from October 8 to 11.

A course in "Social Psychology" commences at the Passmore Edwards Settlement on October 9, at 8 p.m.

The Seventh Norman Kerr Memorial Lecture of the Society for the Study of Inebriety will be delivered in the Robert Barnes Hall, 1, Wimpole Street, Cavendish Square, W.1, by Major W. McAdam Eccles, on Tuesday, October 9, at 5.30 p.m., the subject being "War and Alcohol."

Under the designation of "Education as National Service" a movement has been initiated, having its headquarters at II, Tavistock Square, W.C.1, the main aim of which is to prepare teachers for pioneer and experimental work in schools. A course has been arranged to train a number of teachers to work in schools which are being conducted in such a way as to provide an atmosphere of freedom for the children and to give opportunity for an early development of individual responsibility. It is stated that pioneer work has been begun in schools such as those of the Caldecott Community and the Little Commonwealth in open-air schools and in a few private schools, besides certain schools under educational authorities; and that work cannot be extended to every part of the country and to all types of schools until there are many new teachers prepared to continue it. Teachers are needed who are keenly alive to the many problems and opportunities that arise in work carried on in an unconventional atmosphere. The course of preparation will consist of: (1) Special study of new forms of organization. (2) Lectures and discussions on the best methods of teaching and study, including handwork and practical subjects. (3) The teaching of "civics" (including personal and public hygiene) and regional survey work. (4) Lectures on the applications of modern psychology and social ethics to educational theory. (5) Lectures on social and educational history, with special

attention to pioneer schools of the past and present. (6) Practical work, which will consist of (a) visits to all types of educational enterprise for observation, to be followed by discussion; (b) some periods of supervised teaching. The course is intended to continue over three terms, but special arrangements can be made for shorter periods. Fee for full course 35 guineas. Application for further particulars should be made to the Hon. Dean, Mrs. Mackenzie, M.A., at 11, Tavistock Square, W.C.1.

A further course of three lectures on "The Basis and Development of International Law," by Sir John Macdonell, K.C.B., M.A., LL.D., F.B.A., Professor of Comparative Law in the University of London, will be held on Thursdays, at 5.30 p.m., in Michaelmas Term, beginning November 15. The lectures given at the London School of Economics are with the approval of the Senate of the University of London and by arrangement with the Council of University College.

On October 15, "Our Day," all patriots will have a special opportunity of contributing to the funds of the great enterprise so successfully carried on by the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John.

The War Office announces that it requires 10,000 volunteers for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps before the end of October. Women employed in V.A.D. military hospitals and Red Cross hospitals are not eligible without a letter from the head of their department testifying that their services in their present positions can be dispensed with.

Shakespearean matinées are being held at the Royal Victoria Hall, Waterloo Road, S.E.1.

A series of educational conferences are to be held during the winter under the auspices of the London Teachers' Association.

A course of lectures on "The Newer Ideals of Education" will be delivered at 11, Tavistock Square, W.C.1, on Tuesdays, at 6.30, in October, November and December.

GREAT THOUGHTS ON CHILD LIFE AND

CHILD WELFARE.

Under this heading are gathered quotations from the works of those who have formed ideals or dealt with actualities relating to child life and child welfare. It is hoped that many of our readers will assist in the compilation of this page by sending any helpful thoughts which they may have found of service in their own experience or discovered in the course of their general reading.

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"A new way of thinking about education has sprung up among many of the more neglected members of our industrial army. They do not want education in order that they may become better technical workmen and earn higher wages; they do not want it in order that they may rise out of their own class. They want it because they know that in the treasures of the mind they can find an aid to good citizenship, a source of pure enjoyment, and a refuge from the necessary hardships of a life spent in the midst of the clanging machinery of our hideous cities of toil."' H. A. L. FISHER.

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Let me but live my life from year to year
With forward face and unreluctant soul,
Not hastening to, nor turning from, the goal;
Not mourning for the things that disappear
In the dim past, nor holding back in fear
From what the future veils, but with a whole
And happy heart, that pays its toll
To youth and age, and travels on with cheer.

So let the way wind up the hill or down, Through rough or smooth, the journey will be joy ;

Still seeking what I sought when but a boy.
New friendships, high adventure, and a crown.
I shall grow old, but never lose life's zest,
Because the road's last turn will be the best."

HENRY VAN DYKE.

THE CHILD.

A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO CHILD WELFARE.

No. 2.

NOVEMBER, 1917.

Vol. VIII.

THIS WAY AND THAT WAY:

RECORDS OF THE PROBLEMS AND PROGRESS OF CHILD WELFARE AMONG THE NECESSITOUS CHILDREN OF LONDON.'

By SIR JOHN Kirk, J.P.

Director of the Shaftesbury Society and Ragged School Union.

IF ever a man were raised up by God to undertake a unique work in the cause of righteousness, that man was Lord Anthony Ashley, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury. He possessed a combination of gifts, of sympathy and of opportunity which made him just such a genius as the occasion required. Here was an aristocrat, a member of the ruling class of the day, with the mind and training of a statesman— and in these he resembled many of his contemporaries. But he had also the heart of a Christian, he was inspired by his family motto, "Love-Serve," and from his boyhood had resolved to devote his life to the service of the poor and the oppressed. In him there seemed to be nothing wanting for the performance of the work to which he was called. Not content to champion the cause of his protégés from afar off, he bridged the gulf, went about among the poorest, and learned their needs at first hand-in that day a most unusual procedure. That a spokesman for the people should arise from among themselves to voice their grievances would not have been remarkable; but that a saviour should arise at the other extreme of society was a miracle.

1 A portion of the first "Shaftesbury Lecture" which, under the "Shaftesbury Foundation Scheme" of the Shaftesbury Society and Ragged School Union, was delivered by Sir John Kirk in the Kingsway Hall, London, October 1, 1917, on the thirty-second anniversary of the death of Lord Shaftesbury, and the day of celebration of Sir John Kirk's fifty years of service for the Shaftesbury Society and Ragged School Union. The Earl of Shaftesbury, K.P., K.C.V.O., the new President of the Society, occupied the chair.

Lord Shaftesbury's social position helped him chiefly in one important direction: it gave him an advantage over the democratic advocate of the poor in that he was able to lay his case more quickly before the statesmen of his time. He entered Parliament several years before the passing of the first Reform Bill. As a member of the House of Commons, and later of the House of Lords, for nearly sixty years he was "on the spot," he had the ear of the Court and of the inner circles of legislative power, and was able to make use of his friendship with the leading personalities in several Governments.

Lord Shaftesbury believed in legislation. He may have concurred in the aphorism that "you cannot make the people good by Act of Parliament," but he believed there was real value in providing them with conditions which rendered good life more easy of attainment. "Remembering as I do," he said, "when there was no Factory Act except that of 1802, I cannot but regard every movement towards reasonable legislative restriction as providential in every sense, whether national or individual. What should we have been as a people, morally or socially, but for legislation?"

He was a cautious statesman as well as religious enthusiast; and the combination of the two made him the most powerful personality of his age for social weal. It was no good for him to divide his motto; there must be service as well as love, and service he interpreted as the consecration of every power and faculty that God had given him. He employed to full advantage his aristocratic status; but where his superior position might tend to become a barrier between him and his beloved poor he did not maintain it. When offered the Garter his comment was, "Will it help or retard in the object I have at heart? -that is the only question that weighs with me." The aristocrat and legislator preached in the open air in the East End of London as readily as he addressed the House of Commons; the resident from Grosvenor Square associated with the costermongers of Hoxton and won their affection and trust. The loyal Churchman stood beside C. H. Spurgeon or the revivalists Moody and Sankey and many others of different creeds from his own, never allowing narrowness or bigotry to hinder fellowship or the progress of his life work.

He had a gift for gathering about him the best men and women, from the highest to the humblest, to help in the causes he had at heart. He recognized and respected character wherever he found it. He commanded confidence and allegiance by his intense seriousness. of purpose and his passionate sincerity. People followed him, not so

much because they liked him as because they knew and trusted him for a leader. His aim was to bind together man to man, class to class, to reconcile the alienated sections of society, to fill up the gulf that separated the wealthy and educated from their less favoured brethren, and to teach men to believe that there was no influence that so enlarges natural gifts and talents as the desire to use for the good of others those already possessed. His own example was magnificent. The once uncared-for lunatic, the poor lodger of the crowded dwelling, the forgotten sailor lad, the ragged child of the gutter, the blind, the cripple, the outcast, the neglected, the despised, the ignorant found in him a friend and champion. The cause that he knew not he searched out. Every human need at home or abroad appealed to his sympathy. It was his first-hand knowledge and the moral indignation aroused by his discoveries of vice and degradation that enabled him to impress his convictions upon unwilling hearers. This habit of directness and care in his benevolent interests-qualities without which philanthropy becomes a pious gamble rather than a certain benefitbrought Lord Shaftesbury first into intimate relations with the early Ragged Schools. It was a kindly providence that fixed his eyes on an advertisement in the Times for monetary assistance to a newly founded Ragged School. He was bound to make inquiries, and to offer help, and having started in this new line of service for suffering children to keep on to the end.

The early Ragged Schools may be set down as among the fruits of the Methodist Revival. Such a revival is to be tested by its practical outcome in the quickening it gives to human conscience. The shaking of the dry bones at the end of the eighteenth century produced some men and women whose eyes began to open to the nonChristian and anti-Christian facts of the life about them. What they used to accept as a part of the normal pattern of life now appalled them as a negation of all the ideals of Christianity.

Here and there, therefore, were the few who, to the best of their ability, and in but humble fashion, chose to serve their Master by tending the neglected children of the poor. Down into the dark quarters of the city these devoted men and women went, amid discomfort and ridicule and sometimes danger, to bring to the degraded and worse than homeless children of the poor the chance of a better life. They taught them to read and write and add; and they instructed. them in the Gospel and its ways of life. These good people established schools one-roomed and ill-equipped affairs, differing vastly from

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